Saturday, 23 October 2010

So we have more tools today to help us save time and get more done, yet I feel that I don’t have enough time to get things done despite the new fangled tools and solutions that are supposed to help me save time and do more. Is it just me, a product of the generation X, that awoke to the concept of technology only when I turned 13 in the mid 80’s with the advent of the BBC B Computer and the Sinclair Spectrum ZX, where we had to be patient and wait for the cassette tape recorder to whir and clank away for at least five to ten minutes before a dot matrix styled image would appear on the screen and allow us to interact with our new “personal computer”. Or is it that actually all these new things that are now available, and I use the term ‘new’ relatively, in that I refer to ‘new’ as the last 25 years, like facebook which allows us to stay connected to our friends, near and far; flickr that allows us to share our photographic memories with our friends, families and even complete strangers, and Twitter, ah Twitter...I so love twitter, the replacement really to subscribing to over cumbersome RSS feeds and having to find our own information, the ability to scan quickly in once place the gargantuan stream of information flowing constantly day and night around the internet for us to pluck from it what we need, comment, engage and participate in the connected world.

So with all these things, surely we should have more time...?

After all we are all now operating so much more efficiently; we have the ability to sift the volumes of information so much more intelligently and quickly. We can do more with less time, engage more people, communicate our thoughts far easier, quicker and more broadly than ever before.

Alas, no. The volumes of information, the mediums by which it its presented, has just consumed our daily lives and yes, enabled us to socially engage more, yet not in an overly personal way, but more in a broadcast fashion. Most social interaction is not as one might expect, one-on-one, yet one-to-many. Most of the time we don’t email people directly on social media – we broadcast to anyone that wants to hear, and even to those that don’t really have an interest in doing so.

Narcissistic per chance ?

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